Exclusive: Watch the Women Who Punked Putin

Pussy Riot has paid a steep price for challenging authority: Three members of the Russian punk-rock performance art collective were sentenced to prison last year, essentially for staging a protest against Russian President Vladimir Putin inside Moscow’s main Orthodox cathedral.

Now their story is the subject of “Pussy Riot: A Punk Prayer,” a new documentary by Mike Lerner and Maxim Pozdorovkin that chronicles what happened to
Nadezhda Tolokonnikova, Maria Alyokhina and Yekaterina Samutsevich. Speakeasy today shares an exclusive clip from the film, which airs Monday, June 10, on HBO at 9 p.m. Eastern.

It’s a timely debut: Alyokhina last weekend ended an 11-day hunger strike, which she had staged in prison to protest the authorities’ decision last month to deny her access to her own parole hearing. She and Tolokonnikova are serving two-year sentences in separate labor camps. Samutsevich was released on appeal last October.

“I have a deep sense of injustice and desire to free them, which I have been working for,” Samutsevich said by Skype earlier this week during a Q&A that accompanied a screening of the documentary in New York. “What we were protesting against is still in place and is a problem that in fact has become worse. The only hope [for change] I think is through visual culture, because by continuing to create art you are creating a language you can’t oppose. That’s realistically the only way to go right now at this point.”

About Speakeasy

Speakeasy is a blog covering media, entertainment, celebrity and the arts. The publication is produced by Barbara Chai and Jonathan Welsh with contributions from the Wall Street Journal staff and others. Write to us at speakeasy@wsj.com or follow us on Twitter at @WSJSpeakeasy or individually @barbarachai.